Author: Vincent Diepeveen
Date: 04:11:20 06/04/02
Go up one level in this thread
On June 04, 2002 at 02:11:40, Russell Reagan wrote: To speak for diep in i-csvn2, on average i was outsearched by 3 ply by the commercial programs i played there. Even The King (Chessmaster) nowaday searches deeper than it used to do. It got like 12 ply now where it in past times would have gotten 9 ply at same hardware. One game it lost and not because it was outsearched but by its own stupidiness. I wasn't feeling bad for getting outsearched. Instead i saw so many times my score go up at for example 11 ply with a certain mainline. Then after making my move opponent needed a huge number of plies more to get a fail low and get to the same move. Nullmove is a great enhancement of nowadays programs, but i get impression most just prune too much. Also all preprocessors i play against get completely annihilated. It is clear that the glory times of preprocessing and getting a few ply more instead, that those days are over. Nevertheless i get impression that most here do not know what is happening last year. Last years we have seen no new ideas which were giving a search speedup like nullmove, hashtables and alfabeta have given. Instead everyone worked at his evaluation bigtime. >I've always heard, better algorithms will beat the fastest code using a less >efficient algorithm any day (IE MinMax vs. Alpha-Beta). My question is, when do >you stop working on algorithmic type stuff and start working solely on adding >knowledge to your program, and focus solely on the evaluation function? Or is >there a even point at which you stop working on things like search and only >focus on evaluation? > >To me, it seems like there is only so much you can do in terms of improving the >searching methods, improving the efficiency of various other functions that are >used often (is square attacked, make move, generate legal moves, etc.). Do you >ever reach a point where the only thing left to significantly improve is the >evaluation function? > >If someone could advise a good plan for what to work on, kind of a step by step >thing, I would love to see what others think of this process. Maybe a sort of >"basics" check list, like Alpha-beta, transposition table, null move, etc. I'm >nearing the point at which my engine will be working, and I'm reaching the "what >next?" stage. An example of what I'm thinking is "I've implemented alpha-beta. >What am I supposed to do to improve the alpha-beta algorithm?" Perhaps I'm >misunderstanding what people mean when they talk about "improving algorithms" >instead of "optimizing". > >I'm kind of looking for some general advice as to what to do after the engine is >successfully up and running, playing without any major known bugs. Do I take a >step back and work on improving those often used functions, or do I move ahead >and begin implementing new things like null move? > >Thanks in advance for all of your comments and advice. > >Russell
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